March 17, 2019

The Centre, in Consultative Status to the 35-member Organization of American States (OAS), proposed the pressing need for a designated unit on Iranian activity across the Americas

“The couple’s arrival via Spain, where Iran is politically active, a week before the 27th anniversary of the Israeli Embassy bombing leaving 22 dead and over 200 wounded, is an alert”

Buenos Aires and Paris, 17 March 2019

On 12 March, Argentine airport security detained an Iranian couple who tried to enter the country from Spain, with stolen and falsified Israeli passports.

“Only a week before the 27th anniversary of the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina that left 22 dead and more than 200 wounded, this casts particular concern in view of the timing of their arrival and reveals that continued Iranian mayhem in Latin America is highly dangerous,” stated Dr. Shimon Samuels and Ariel Gelblung, respectively the Centre’s Director for International Relations and Representative for Latin America.

Samuels added, “In view of the report of the assassinated Prosecutor for the AMIA Jewish Centre bombing, Alberto Nisman - and the findings shared with us - Hizbollah cells exist and operate from Venezuela and Surinam in the North to the Triple Frontier area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay in the South and even into the Caribbean, targetting the United States."

He continued: "The porous nature of lengthy unmonitored borders requires a designated unit on Iranian/Hizbollah activity across the hemisphere... In Consultative Status to the 35-member Organization of American States (OAS), we have stressed to Secretary General Luis Almagro the pressing need for a Pan-American approach to this danger.”

Gelblung emphasized, among Iranian linked interventions:

- "The illegal activity in the Triple Frontier region- the AMIA Jewish Centre bombing in Buenos Aires- the assassination of Prosecutor Alberto Nisman- the provision of Venezuelan passports to Hizbollah terrorists by the government of Nicolás Maduro- the undocumented flights between Tehran and Caracas- the attempts to influence pressure to revive the nefarious Memorandum of Understanding between Argentina and Iran aimed at gaining impunity for the Iranians sought by INTERPOL for the AMIA atrocity."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).